Monthly Archives: July 2008

It’s been coming for a while. I had to finally admit the truth. I do not enjoy reading Anne McCaffrey novels released in the past few years. This is a hard thing to accept, because I’ve been a McCaffrey addict since 1995 and have a really solid collection, but the Acorna books, the Petaybee second series, the Pern books with Todd, they just don’t cut it. If I’d been honest with myself, I would have stopped reading them a good five years ago, but I always held onto the hope that things would get better, that it was a temporary glitch… Sadly, tonight, I put down Acorna’s Triumph (borrowed from the library) about one third in and said, no, no more. I will not be finishing this book.

Ms McCaffrey’s publishers, for goodness sake, just because a person has published best sellers for decades does not mean you can disappoint their fans by allowing such juvenile, repetitive drivel be produced under their name! David Eddings’ publishers, the same goes for you!

Took Miss Two and five sixths to the dentist today. She appears to have killed one of her front teeth with a knock at some point and it’s discolouring 😦 I was rather apprehensive about this, because while the child is very happy to pretend about doctors and what they’ll do when we visit, she always goes shy and unco-operative with the actual doctor, so I thought the same might happen. Apparently dentists (perhaps especially young pretty Irish dentists!) are not as scary as doctors? This kid was the epitome of calm and co-operation! She walked into the room and climbed straight into the chair, opened her mouth (nice and wide!) on cue, let the doctor look around, even got an X-RAY! AND got her teeth cleaned with the buzzy cleaning thingo. What a champ! And was friendly and cute and polite throughout.

No needles or drills of course, but still, lots of mouth tugging and stuff, so I’m really proud of her!

And just cos I can, here’s a cute pic of her at her friend’s birthday party a couple of weeks ago, and the cheeky monkey after her first sip of her babycino 🙂

girlThanks to the wonderful generosity we have almost reached the halfway point of the fundraiser, simply from donations. This is completely awesome, and we now want to introduce the next step in our fundraising process:

ART THAT SCARES YOU

Ever read a short story by Paul Haines? Chances are that afterwards you needed a strong drink, strong cup of coffee, or a long shower. Paul is well known in the Australian speculative fiction community for writing the creepy stuff, the scary shit, the story that makes you go ‘whoa’ or ‘aargh’ or ‘ewwwwww.’ And we love him for it, because he does it so damn well.

Right now, Paul and his family are dealing with some scary shit of their own. After being diagnosed with bowel cancer, having sections of his bowel removed and enduring six months worth of chemotherapy, he has recently discovered he has spots on his liver. Paul has met this news by reloading his guns and is going to fight it with two other forms of chemotherapy for cancers like his, combined with a monoclonal antibody called Avastin. Avastin, however is not part of Medicare or the private health system’s funding at this stage. It costs $20,000 to do it. Money that he doesn’t have.

This is a call to arms for artists, writers, craftspeople, publishers, and anyone who has weird freaky things living in their attic that they want to share. We are currently looking for pledged donations of art, craft, books, baking and other items or services – they don’t have to match our ART THAT SCARES YOU theme but we’d love it if they did.

Email artscaresyou@gmail.com to let us know what you would like to contribute to the auction, and we will let you know what to do next.

Conflux is running a virtual mini-con this weekend. It’s an online forum where various Conflux guests of honour (both current and past), workshop presenters, committee members and other worthies — wits and raconteurs all — get to chat with online visitors, answer questions and generally liven the day with sparkling banter and repartee.

Details of who’ll be in the hot seat for each session are below.

To take part, just go the Conflux forum at the appropriate time, sign in and banter away! Hope to (virtually) see you there.